CHALLENGES FACING THE COMMUNITY

In Israel today, the Ethiopian-Israeli community numbers some 100,000 people, with over 60% under the age of 18. As reported by the JDC-Israel "unless the community's children are given the tools to achieve the same level of educational success as other Israelis, the Ethiopian community as a whole will remain mired in poverty, and will face the risk of forming a new, permanent underclass."

Collapse of Traditional Community and Family Support Systems

Over 75% of Israel's 222,000 Ethiopian immigrants came from environments of subsistence farming, with little or no formal education. Social support came from extended families or within small communities, where roles were clearly defined and status within the community was indisputable. The immigration process has left many adults without parenting skills fitting to a nuclear family in an urban, industrialized setting, and without the respect from their children that was customary in Ethiopia. Without a perceptible support system, parents often lack confidence in their dealings with bureaucracy and in decision making, which further weakens their ability to exercise parental authority over their Israeli children. Poor Hebrew exacerbates the demoralization of many parents, who are dependent on their children for translation. Defining behavioral boundaries for their Israeli children that are acceptable to the Ethiopian cultural norms of most parents is bewildering and, at best, a challenge to enforce.

Financial Hardship

One of the main problems facing the Ethiopian community is financial hardship, particularly since the series of financial cutbacks to the Department of Social Services, and consequently to those dependant on social welfare benefits. Over 90% of Ethiopian families live at or below the poverty line.

Hadera's Ethiopian community comprises over 7% of its 82,000 residents. Over 20% of the city's Ethiopian families are single-parent families headed by the mother, and 85% of these mothers are not employed. Of Hadera's two-parent families, 29% of families have neither parent employed. Over 40% of Hadera's Ethiopian children live in families with five or more children. As a result of the Government's housing loan scheme of the 1990's, about half of Hadera's families live in buildings inhabited solely or mostly by Ethiopian immigrants (Brookdale Institute, 2004).

Academic Underachievement

The Dovrat Commission of 2004 on the state of Israeli education based its recommendations on an exhaustive review of the education system and comparisons with 28 other OECD countries, including Greece, Turkey and Portugal. In the key subjects of math, computers and literacy, Israel scored almost last or last in every age group. Israel has the largest social gap between the rich and the poor and "does not provide opportunity for social mobility ... education is supposed to be the main tool for social mobility". The research committee found that the most influential factor in the success of an Israeli child at school is the educational level of the mother. The committee concluded that the Israeli education system "is in very deep crisis" and is "the last country in the western world to implement major educational reform".

Israel's Ethiopian immigrant children do not benefit sufficiently from the education provided in the school system, do not reach expected academic achievement and are therefore denied equal opportunities as adults. Many underachieving high school students are directed to lower level vocational frameworks, reinforcing the socioeconomic rifts in Israeli society.

In a report presented to the Knesset in 2002, Professor Victor Levy of the Hebrew University stated that Ethiopian-Israeli students completing elementary school (6th grade) trail their veteran Israeli counterparts by 25% in mathematics, Hebrew language, the sciences and English. Even more alarming, this gap widens to 35% by the end of 7th grade.

The lack of resources devoted by the Israeli educational system to meet the needs of this immigrant group is glaringly evident in the fact that the drop-out rate of Ethiopian-Israelis is five times higher than the national average (Brookdale Institute, 2001). Another alarming statistic is provided by the IAEJ (Israel Association of Ethiopian Jews) who maintain that about one-third of Ethiopian students enrolled in high school do not actually attend school.

Lack of fluency in the digital world is a discriminating factor that begins to segregate youngsters from early on in their education. Immigrant children without frequent access to a computer have weak processing and search skills, quickly fall behind their peers in the use of technology, and this "digital divide" contributes to their underachievement.

Health and the Emergence of Chronic Diseases

Chronic disease was unheard of in rural Ethiopia but the drastic change in lifestyle and diet that accompanies aliya to Israel has led to a rapid rise in chronic illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, and asthma. The general population of Israel has a diagnosis rate for diabetes of 3-4%, similar to that of most western countries. Diagnosed cases among Israel's Ethiopian community currently reach 17%, with the numbers rising as screening becomes more commonplace. Israel's Ethiopian parents are largely unaware of healthy lifestyle choices in a modern, industrialized society, and consequently the children suffer from inadequate nutrition, shockingly poor dental health and a dramatically elevated risk of diabetes.

References:

Myers - JDC - Brookdale Institute
The Center for Research on Immigrant Absorption

The Israel Association of Ethiopian Jews

Tene Briut - Diabetes Outreach Program for the Ethiopian Community, Hillel Yaffe Hospital

Hadera Development Fund